Southeast / Avalon / South Catalina I, CA being encounter — July 28, 1962

At dawn on July 28, 1962, the captain of a charter fishing boat south of Catalina Island reportedly noticed stationary lights and a low vessel that he initially took for a submarine. In Coral and Jim Lorenzen’s later account, the encounter occurred about six miles south of the island. The craft appeared steel-grey and unmarked, with much of its deck nearly awash and an unusual structure toward the stern. Five ordinary-looking men were reportedly visible aboard: two in white clothing, two wearing white shirts with dark trousers, and one in a sky-blue jumpsuit. The fishing boat passed at an estimated quarter-mile distance. The unidentified vessel then allegedly turned toward it and approached so rapidly that the captain manoeuvred away, fearing a collision. It passed silently, producing a substantial swell but not the conventional wake the captain expected. The account entered the literature through the Lorenzens’ UFOs Over the Americas, published in 1968, and later reproductions of that passage. A reported contact with the Navy did not produce an identification in the retelling. The observation describes an unidentified submarine-like vessel and human-looking crew; its treatment as an anomalous underwater object is a subsequent interpretation, not a sighting of nonhuman anatomy or an airborne spacecraft.